Ghosts in Shorts
by FiveRivers
Summary: A collection of shorts and drabbles. Now playing: Experiment 2.
1. Chapter 1

**Hi there. This is just going to be a collection of really short fics. I think they're called drabbles?**

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Floof

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Jazz opened the door with her hip and struggled to the kitchen. She heaved the grocery bags up onto the counter with a sigh of relief. Usually Mom did the shopping, but she and Dad had been holed up in the lab lately, and there wasn't any food in the house. Or there hadn't been, before Jazz had gone shopping.

She put the groceries away, and intending to rest for a couple hours after such _strenuous_ activity, made her way to the living room. That's when she saw Danny, sprawled out on the couch, fast asleep. Jazz smiled, then, as a thought came to her, bit her lip.

She shouldn't. Danny didn't get enough sleep as it was, and he wouldn't be happy if she woke him. On the other hand, it wasn't likely that he would wake up. He looked dead to the world, pun intended. It wasn't like he was having a nightmare, either, so it was unlikely that he'd panic and try to smack her, either.

As quietly as she could, Jazz approached the couch. Then she bent down and patted Danny's head, ruffling his hair.

"Floof, floof," she whispered. "Cute little floof."

Satisfied, Jazz turned and left. There was a book she wanted to read in her room.

A couple seconds later, Danny sat up, blinking in sleepy confusion. "What was _that?"_


	2. Chapter 2

**So I did another short little one. I will take prompts for this, if you guys want.**

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White

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Danny smiled at the sunshine streaming through his window and rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. It looked like it was finally going to be warm enough for him to wear shorts and short sleeved shirts outside without his mom, or, more likely, Jazz, getting on his case. It was a Saturday, too. Perfect. It would have been even more perfect if he hadn't been woken up by ghosts three times last night, but you couldn't have everything.

Still smiling, Danny rolled out of bed and opened his dresser. It wasn't like temperature changes, for warmer or cooler, affected him much anymore, but Danny was ready for a change. Sweaters were comforting, but shorts were freedom.

 _Freedom._

Once dressed, Danny bounced down the stairs. He was meeting up with Sam and Tucker in the park for lunch, and he had slept straight through breakfast. He was supposed to bring something. What was lunch-like in the house, currently? Bread. Bread was good. Nutella. Peanut butter. What else? Cookies. Were ginger snaps vegan? Eh, Tucker would eat them if they weren't. He could take the oranges, too. No one would miss the oranges. Well, Jazz might, but his parents wouldn't.

He found a bag to put his spoils in, and, shouting that he was leaving, ran out.

He found Sam and Tucker sitting under their usual tree, chilling on a blanket. "Hi guys!" he said, cheerfully.

They looked up. Then Sam fell backwards, clutching her eyes. Tucker followed suit a moment later.

"Oh my _gosh,"_ howled Sam.

"What?" said Danny, panicking just a little bit. "What? What's wrong? Sam? Tuck?" He looked down at himself, then behind himself. Had they seen something?

"I'm blind!" said Sam.

"What?!"

Then Tucker burst out laughing. "Your legs, man."

"My-?" Danny looked down again. "My _legs?_ What's wrong with my legs?" asked Danny, slightly hurt.

"They're so _white,"_ gasped Sam, miraculously recovering from her 'blindness.' "Jeez, Danny, you have to warn us before you show up looking like that."

"They aren't _that_ white," protested Danny.

"I've seen people at the Skulk and Lurk that are tanner than your legs."

"Dudes, I've sheets of printer paper tanner than Danny's legs."

"You've seen my legs before."

"Yeah, at night," said Tucker. "When you're... You know. Not under the sun."

"Can you say 'blinding?'"

"I hate you both," grumbled Danny. He sat down on the blanket. "Give me your chips."


	3. Chapter 3

**Just some more silliness.**

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Loop

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The portal opened up without warning, dumping the ghost right on the kitchen table and ruining Danny's after-school snack. It closed immediately thereafter, disappearing into the stained ceiling. Danny was already reaching for a thermos, gearing up for a fight, when the ghost's appearance finally caught up to him.

"Wh-"

"I'm not Amorpho!" interrupted the ghost.

"Yeah? So why are you wearing my face?" Danny knew that there were ghosts other than Amorpho who could shapeshift, but he didn't know them by name.

"I'm not!" said the ghost, hands thrown out to the sides, crouching on the other side of the table. "It's a loop. A time loop. And you had better make it a _stable_ time loop, because I don't want to make Clockwork deal with another paradox involving me, okay?" The ghost ran gloved hands through snowy hair, and, with a flash of light, turned into Danny's doppelganger. "Come on, dude. Ah heck, um, you don't believe me. Heck what did he, uh, what did I say next? I said... Three green, two red, a pink, three orange, and two blue. And a purple."

"What?" said Danny, thoroughly nonplussed.

"The gummies," said the other Danny, pointing at Danny's snack where it laid on the floor. "In the bag. Those are the colors."

"... You're trying to prove that you're from the future based on the colors of the gummies in that bag."

"Look, I'm not from all that far in the future. Like, thirty minutes, tops. And don't lie, that's totally something that you would do. I know, because I'm you and I'm doing it."

"I guess," said Danny, trying to keep both the ghost and the gummy packet in his field of vision.

"Dude, just pick it up. I don't know how much time we have here."

"Shouldn't you?"

"I don't know, should I? What part of me looks like an expert on time travel? The part that looks like you, or the part that looks like you?"

Okay, that sounded more like Danny. He grabbed the packet with his telekinesis.

The other Danny groaned. "I keep forgetting that I can do that."

Danny scoffed. "If it's only been half an hour-"

"Give me a break. I'm panicking here. Come on open it."

"How many of each did you say it was again?"

"Three green, two red, a pink, three orange, two blue, and a purple."

Danny tore the bag open. "Heck," he said, "you're right. How do I fix this?"

"Just go to the Ghost Zone and fly towards Elysium. The portal will eat you before you know it."

"Okay," said Danny, but he hesitated.

"Look, dude, if I am Amorpho, you can come back and beat me up. Just go, before the portal decides not to show up, or something."

"Okay," said Danny, finally going down the stairs to the lab.

Danny, standing in the kitchen, sighed and picked up the pack of gummies. "Finally," he said.


	4. Chapter 4

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Dimidiate

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It was extremely lucky that Jack Fenton did not notice that, as he turned, energetic, to go up the stairs, he swept the business end of the Fenton Ghost Catcher through his son. His son, being Danny Fenton, also known as Phantom, a ghost-human hybrid, was split in two by the net, and lay on the floor, shocked, for a good minute.

Why did these things _always_ happen to him?

His human half abruptly burst into tears.

Phantom was up and at his (his own?) side in under a second, racking his brain for what he had been thinking of right before he went through the Ghost Catcher. When he (they?) had experimented with it before, his thoughts and intentions immediately before usually determined, or at least affected, the results. What would make his human half suddenly cry?

"What's wrong?" he asked, wincing as his voice echoed off the flat surfaces of the lab. That hurt his ears.

"They _hate_ us so much," whispered the human. But then he sat up and dried his tears on his sleeves.

Oh, yes. That would have been on his (their?) mind, what with what Jack had been saying. Phantom, however, was ambivalent about the whole thing. Ugh. He hoped that he wasn't following the 'ghosts have no emotions' stereotype.

The thought lacked feeling, even indignation was absent. Great. He could barely muster annoyance.

Then Fenton started giggling. "Your face looks funny," he said, still whispering.

"It is your face, too, you know."

Fenton gasped, shock racing across his features. "You're right." Then, "Oh my gosh, I'm an emotional trainwreck. How are you not freaking out?"

"I don't think I can," said Phantom, standing. "Come on, we've got to go get the Ghost Catcher away from Dad."

"Wait," said Fenton, also standing, "your face-"

"What about my face?"

"You're bruised." Fenton reached out and up to touch Phantom.

Phantom jerked back, hissing at the pain the brief contact had brought him. Oh, that couldn't be good. Looked at his hands, and removed a glove before experimentally pressing down on his palm. He frowned when it, too, bruised.

"Oh," said his other half, immediately understanding the implication. "That's not good."

"No, it isn't. Let's hurry up and get that thing."

"Wh- Why don't you overshadow me?"

"Hm?"

"Overshadow me, and go invisibly through the ghost catcher? That, that should work, right? And that, that way, you won't, um..." He trailed off. "S-sorry! I'm sorry. It was a dumb idea, I shouldn't have said anything I-" He sniffled.

Phantom stared. How did he deal with this. "No... It's a good idea. Just, are you sure? The other time, I think we got really mad, or something, right?"

Fenton nodded. "Do it," he said.

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Danny flopped down on his bed, thoroughly exhausted, but in one piece. That had been interesting. Horrible, but interesting. He was still off balance from the experience of, once again, being split in two. It was interesting to know that one possible split was emotionally unstable Fenton and physically unstable Phantom. It was horrible to realize that the Ghost Catcher could render him almost completely useless.

He sighed. He wasn't in the mood to do his homework now.


	5. Chapter 5

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Tail

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Danny cautiously checked each room in the house. He _should_ be the only one home right now, Jazz should be out with a study group, his parents should be out setting up ghost detectors at the warehouses the Box Ghost liked so much, but considering what he was about to do, it was a good idea to check. With each empty room, his confidence grew. Having double checked the lab, Danny was satisfied.

He was home alone.

Not wanting to waste any more time, Danny transformed and flew straight to the bathroom. He did not return to human form, but instead, briefly, examined his reflection. It was, at the moment, the reflection of a ghost. White hair, green eyes, glow, an almost indiscernible blue-green cast to his skin, despite its tan. A faint scar licked up the side of his face, the only visible sign of his death. It was a reflection he had grown used to over the past few months, though he had yet to figure out how it all worked.

Well. He wasn't going to gain any sudden insights by staring into his own eyes.

He lifted his chin, and searched for the zipper of his hazmat suit. Finding it, he pulled it down, decisively. He stripped out of the suit then, gloves, boots and all, leaving him in his underwear, a pair of briefs and a singlet. He took off those as well, leaving all of his ghostly clothes to sublimate into ectoplasmic mist on the floor.

The full extent of his death scar was revealed now, a winding, splitting, lightning vine that connected the palm of his left hand to the sole of his right foot. He had seen it before. It wasn't what he was interested in right now.

Right now, he was staring at his legs. They were there, fully articulated. He had all his toes, all his toenails. He checked his fingers, his hands. They had all the bits he had come to expect. He even had fingerprints. He lifted one foot, relying on his natural, ghostly buoyancy to keep him in the air. He had toe-prints, too. Interestingly, both his fingernails and toenails were quite a bit neater than they were when he was human. They were very even, very regular, short and smooth. He didn't have any hanging cuticles, either, which was odd. He almost always had a cuticle or a chipped nail. Still, there wasn't really anything missing. Visually, he had all of the important bits, including, yeah, the important bits. Even the faint bruise he'd gotten on his knee from Dash shoving him into his locker and slamming the door was there.

He planted his hands on either side of his ribs, and dragged them down, noting the placement of bone, of muscle, of skin, down to his knees. He straightened again, and, with a sense of slight foreboding, formed his legs into his ghostly tail. It was a good deal more disturbing to watch skin, muscle, bone, and other... anatomy merge into a single mass than it was to watch his jumpsuit do the same thing.

His scar, rather than vanishing, or being broken up into segments, wrapped entirely around his tail, tapering off at the end.

He watched his tail flick back and forth for a couple of minutes. He could feel it, of course. It looked very strange like this. Everything south of his bellybutton had sort of... gone away. At the beginning, after his bellybutton, it was quite solid, but as it got closer to its end, it became steadily more misty, more transparent. He ran his hands down his sides again. He could detect the remnants of hip bones, and associated muscles, and the skin there felt mostly like skin, but past that, things became... Soft. Velvety. Almost plush. By the time he got to the end of his tail, it felt like he was running his hands over a cross between the tail of a very fluffy, very soft cat, and a cloud of mist.

The very end of his tail wrapped reflexively around his curious fingers, which he could see clearly through the transparent limb.

"Weird," he said, finally.


	6. Chapter 6

**Hey there! This one might be a bit confusing if you haven't read about the wisps in Mortified or my Ectober shorts.**

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Remora

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The will-o-the-wisp cooed in Danny's ear. He giggled.

"Okay! Okay! That tickles!" he protested, leaning away from the adventurous little ghost. It's cousins (Danny hadn't quite worked out how family groups worked for wisps) peeked out shyly from behind leaves and within knot holes. They were usually more outgoing, but it was broad daylight. The wisps preferred the night.

Danny swung off his backpack, and unzipped it to pull out a bag of caramel popcorn. He pulled off the tab, and unraveled the plastic. The wisp was vibrating in excitement. Danny removed a handful of popcorn, and offered it up.

The wisp drifted down and engulfed a single piece of popcorn, humming happily. The other wisps floated over one by one. Danny tried to make sure that each wisp got at least one piece of popcorn. He might have also taken a piece or two for himself.

The first wisp (Danny thought that its name might translate as Flies-Quickly-Through-Leaves, but he wasn't sure, and he couldn't quite manage the thrill, or the color change, to say it properly.) flew back up to rest on Danny's ear. Then it made a faint inquisitive noise, and drifted upwards to brush against Danny's temple.

"Hm? Do I have something stuck up there?" He rubbed his hand over the offending area and frowned as it came away with flakes of blood and dirt. "Oh," he said. "It's just leftovers from my last fight." He ran a hand through his hair, and suppressed a grimace. He hadn't taken a shower in a while. His hair was kind of greasy and dirty. Actually, that could be used to describe his entire body. He hadn't had a lot of time for hygiene lately.

He sighed.

The wisp whistles sharply, in a _hey,_ _over here!_ way. The wisps converged on Danny, each of them lisping gently over his skin. Danny froze.

The wisps were largely harmless, and very friendly, but Danny's unique physiology made him uniquely vulnerable to them. They didn't mean to trouble Danny, but they didn't always realize that what they were doing affected Danny negatively. Since the last... incident, the wisps had settled on radiating pure ectoenergy and low-key contentment. That mix didn't make him hyper, depressed, or otherwise put him in an altered mental state. It just energized him, as it was supposed to.

But this was different. This was something new. He didn't know how to feel about it.

It was like they were kissing him, and the were very fuzzy and ticklish. Eventually, Danny couldn't help but laugh helplessly. Then they started to card through his hair, and he began to pur. Danny wasn't yet comfortable with his tendency to pur when he was happy. It was an inhuman reaction. Jazz, Sam, and Tucker thought it was cute, which helped, but, well, feelings didn't disappear at a moment's notice.

What the wisps were doing wasn't hurting, though, so he stayed still. Mostly still. Sometimes they would surprise him into giggles. Slowly, he started to relax. After a while, they finished whatever it was they were doing, and gathered around Danny like piles of glowing pillows.

Danny sighed, and laid down on top of them. They chimed and jingled. Danny rubbed an eye, frowned in confusion, then extended the rub to the rest of his face and hair. He turned his attention to his clothes. He was clean.

"Huh," he said. Well, Clockwork had compared the wisps to remora, cleaner fish, when he was first explaining them to Danny. "Thank you."


	7. Chapter 7

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Teeth

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"You eat differently when you're Phantom," observed Sam.

Danny paused to consider that, lowering the half-eaten cherry from his blue-tinted lips. "Yeah," he said. "Probably." He shrugged, and took another delicate bite out of the cherry.

"What do you mean?" mumbled Tucker from around his absolutely massive bite of sandwich.

The three of them were sitting in the Specter Speeder, taking a break from exploring the Ghost Zone to eat lunch. It had been Sam's turn to pack the lunch, and she had filled up the cooler with a variety of vegetarian options, with an emphasis of fresh fruit.

Tucker had, of course, supplemented this with a meat-packed sandwich. Well, as long as Sam didn't have to deal with it, she didn't really care. Not anymore. That didn't mean that Sam wouldn't argue about it, however.

"When he's Fenton," started Sam, "he eats a lot like you. No offense, Danny."

"None taken."

"Hey," complained Tucker, with difficulty. Just about the entire sandwich was inside his mouth now.

"But when you're Phantom," continued Sam, "you're neater. You take smaller bites. You're a little slower. You eat as much, though."

"That makes sense," said Danny. "I mean, my teeth are different. You guys know that."

"Sure," said Tucker, having forced down the remainder of his sandwich. "But are they that different?"

Danny blinked slowly, then smiled, and opened his mouth wide. Impossibly wide. Wide enough that his teeth were very nearly all on the same, vertical, plane.

"Dude, that's creepy."

"Eh," said Danny.

It was creepy, even by Sam's standards, but it was impossible to look away from.

Danny's ghost form looked remarkably human from the outside, but even looking this far in underscored that it was not. Danny's lips, his gums, and the tip of his tongue were dull, muted pink, but after a centimeter or two, that color became threaded through with purples. By his throat, his mouth was swirls of pastel blues and faint teals.

That didn't touch on his teeth.

"Jeez," said Sam, "how many teeth do you even have?"

"Erhy-hoo."

"No you don't."

"You can understand what he said?" asked Tucker.

"I hoo. Eheyoh ooe."

"You do not have thirty-two teeth," said Sam, counting. "That number includes wisdom teeth, which you don't get until you're older." His canines, she noticed, while not being outright vampire fangs like Vlad's, were very sharp, as were his bicuspids. They were all very white, and very straight. "Or- heck. You do. How do you have that many?"

Danny closed his mouth with a snap. "My wisdom teeth came in fast," he said, and shrugged. "It apparently runs in the family. Jazz had to have her wisdom teeth out when she was fifteen."

"So it isn't even a ghost thing," said Tucker.

Danny shrugged again. "Them being _sharp_ is," he said. "Not the wisdom teeth. The other ones. The wisdom teeth being sharp would be awful. I bite my cheek enough as it is."

"I still don't think they're _that_ different," said Tucker.

"Trust me, it feels a _lot_ different when it's in your mouth. What happened to the rest of the cherries?"

"You ate them," said Sam.

"Oh," said Danny, looking crushed.

Sam couldn't suppress a snicker. After a requisite glare, Danny gave Sam a sheepish smile, revealing a couple of those sharp, ghostly teeth.

"Okay, I'm being silly. Not as silly as Tucker, though."

"Hey!"


	8. Chapter 8

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Johnny and the Shadow

Johnny was beginning to deeply regret splitting up with Kitty-

\- That was splitting up _physically,_ not romantically, he would never split up with her romantically-

\- not permanently, anyway.

What had he been thinking about?

He pulled up hard on the handlebars of his motorcycle, narrowly dodging the baton-blast of one of Walker's goons.

That's right. He was running from the police. He flipped the bird over his shoulder. They weren't even _real_ police. Jerks.

He hoped Kitty had gotten away safely. She probably had. Her power was actually better at throwing off pursuit than Johnny's. One kiss, and, poof! The lucky stiff (could a ghost be a stiff?) was gone, tossed all the way across the Zone.

Hence the regret. Johnny just _had_ to be the hero, and lead the cops away. He was such an idiot. Kitty was probably going to have to bail him out, or, more likely, break him out, since they didn't have any money, or anything worth trade (except for Johnny's bike, and that was probably going to get wrecked).

(Probably going to get wrecked, because he kept forgetting to look out for floating mountains, like that one.)

Oh sh-!

Johnny's narrow escape was not replicated by his three closest pursuers. Sadly, he had far more than three pursuers.

He needed a way to lose these clowns!

It was really too bad he hadn't been smart enough to drive towards a part of the Zone he knew. Instead, he, a complete moron, was completely lost.

Kitty had probably gone somewhere she knew. Heck, she was probably back in their lair, wondering where in the Realms he had gone!

It was times like these that Johnny really wished he had, like, a partner. A right hand guy. Kitty was great. Perfect! His best friend, this side of the great divide or the other. And she could fight like anyone, which was a great perk, as far as Johnny was concerned. But she wasn't a guy.

Johnny got up over the rim of a larger island, and touched down. There were trees here, great, towering, dark pines. He could hide under them, lose his tails, provided he didn't piss off whoever, or whatever, lived here.

Too bad Johnny could've had a phD in pissing people off, if hadn't kicked the bucket. If people gave phDs for that kind of thing. Which they didn't.

He glanced up an back, over his shoulder, trying to see if he was still being followed. He was. Actually, he seemed to have attracted even more cops. Damn.

He looked forward just in time to crash his bike.

Johnny tumbled. Only his instinctive flight saved him from cracking his head against the ground, a tree, a couple rocks, and now he was rolling downhill, head over heels. Gravity had changed. The local rules didn't like flying. That happened sometimes. Johnny always hated it when it did.

He came to rest at the bottom of a steep, rocky, ravine.

He sat up, and picked bits of gravel and twig out of his face. He'd had worse crashes.

(Particularly the one that had killed him.)

Well, no matter how bad the crash was, his bike was gone. He was going to have to hoof it, which was _so_ not his style.

He got up and looked around, trying to figure out which direction would be his best bet, and did a double take when he got to his shadow. Now, Johnny wasn't a genius, not even close, but considering where the light was coming from, and how much of it there was, his shadow looked kind of... Big. And dark. And sharp edged. And sort of... in the wrong place.

He shook his head. Not currently his problem.

Without flight, he wasn't going to be able to get up the sides of the ravine, so he picked a direction and started walking down it. Hopefully, Walker's goons wouldn't find him here, because he'd be stuck. He'd have to be quiet. Some of those jerks had sharp ears. It hadn't been an issue when he had his bike, he could outrun them, but not like this. Not on foot. Not in this stupid hole.

This sucked.

"So, just me and my shadow, huh?" he muttered, nervously. "That's fine, that's fine. M'shadow's the only one that always got my back." Most of his life, he'd been alone, one way or the other. Then he'd met Kitty, and-

He whirled. He could have sworn he'd seen something move out of the corner of his eye, but there wasn't anything there.

"Freaking creepy place." Johnny took a step back, and slipped on a rock. He fell, starting a small, but loud, avalanche. Luckily, it wasn't enough to bury him. He got up.

... And heard voices.

He hissed under his breath, and started to sprint down the ravine. Maybe if he could find a place to climb out-

Too late! A pair of Walker's goons leaned down over the rim of the ravine, leveling their guns at Johnny. He backtracked, but two more goons peered into the ravine from that direction.

"Surrender!" barked one of them.

"Uh," said Johnny.

Very suddenly, a tree branch fell on one of the goons. She stumbled, and shot her baton- but it wasn't pointed at Johnny anymore. It was pointed at her fellow goon.

The baton went off, hitting and, as per the design of the strange weapons, binding, the goon. _His_ weapon went off in turn, still pointed in Johnny's general direction, but Johny was quick to duck, and the blast hit the ravine wall behind him, causing a small avalanche that just barely missed Johnny. The other two goons weren't so lucky. The ravine wall collapsed underneath them, half-burying them in rubble.

This left just the first goon. She quickly retrained her weapon on Johnny, who raised his hands, not in surrender, but to shoot a pair of ghost rays from his hands. Now, Johnny wasn't very good at ghost rays, he'd never been able to put enough power into them to do real damage, but he could do them. Sorta.

The guard jerked back as Johnny's rays hit her, and then shrieked as a giant shadow monster rose up out of the ground flung her away, over the tops of the trees.

After a beat of stunned disbelief, Johnny stumbled backward, cursing. The shadow monster (ghost?) twisted towards Johnny, ruby red eyes glittering.

Then it shrunk, receeding into... Johnny's shadow. Huh.

Now Johnny wasn't the brightest ghost in the Zone, but he could put two and two together, and, Ancients, but he could work with this!


	9. Chapter 9

**Sort of for Angst Day.**

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Nights Like This

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Sometimes, when Danny was flying high and alone in the night air over Amity Park, he wondered.

When the stars were out, he wondered about them. About what secrets they held. About what they had seen. He wondered about their long lives, and the planets that orbited them. He wondered if any living planets circled them, if there were intelligences out there looking back and wondering the same thing.

When the moon shone he wondered about it. About when humans would once again set foot on its surface, and if he could be one of the lucky ones to do it.

When he could spot Mars, or Jupiter, or one of the other planets, he wondered much the same things.

But when the sky was clouded over and he'd been plagued by more ghosts than could be squeezed into a _Christmas Carol_ marathon, well. He wondered about different things.

It was a cloudy night, and blood dripped from a shallow cut in his side. Except it wasn't blood. It was ectoplasm.

On nights like this, Danny wondered what he was.

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The cut wasn't bad. Danny had gotten worse. Much worse. Much, much worse. It hardly hurt. It certainly didn't compare to dying.

 _But._

Danny really should clean it and bandage it. He should go home, and get the first aid kit. That had been his intention when he'd flown away from the scene of the fight. But he'd stopped, staring at the cut.

He was bleeding green. He always did that when he was a ghost. It shouldn't feel like a surprise. It shouldn't feel like a punch in the stomach.

 _But._

The ghost he'd fought tonight had been Spectra.

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 _How could anyone ever care about you? Nobody knows you. You don't know yourself. You don't even know what you are._ _Pretending to be half-human... You're a freak, and deluded along with it. You've seen your parents' research. You've heard what they say. There's no way for a human to have ghost powers._

 _And there's no way for a ghost to be good._

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As always, there was enough truth in what she said that the rest was still digging its sinister way into his brain. Or whatever the ghostly equivalent was. Just like his fingers were digging into the cut in his side. It hurt. It grounded him. His parents also said that ghosts couldn't feel pain.

So there.

He shuddered, and continued his flight home.

It was on nights like this that Danny wondered if he was really half-alive...

... or just a ghost who thought he was.


	10. Chapter 10

**Wrote this because tumblr. Enjoy (because Danny won't).**

 **Not related to Mortified, or anything else.**

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Stockades

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Danny crept down the stairs into the lab to empty the thermos into the Ghost Zone. Normally, he would have phased in invisibly, but his parents had updated the security system again, and he didn't want to set it off. Especially not when one of them might be down there.

His parents weren't upstairs, anyway, even if he didn't hear the usual clinks, whirs, buzzes, bangs, and explosions from the lab. They might have gone out. Danny hadn't really been paying attention, and that was before he had to leave to fight Skulker for the billionth time.

Ancients, but Skulker was a lunatic. Who else would skin a ghost? A _person?_ It was so gross. And creepy.

But his parents weren't in the lab, freeing Danny to quickly cross the room and empty the thermos of the day's catch. Even if they were annoying and sort of evil, they didn't deserve to be trapped in the thermos indefinitely. That would be cruel.

He sighed as the indicator light on the thermos blinked to empty, and removed it from its receptacle. At the least, he'd be seeing the Box Ghost again tomorrow. Boxy had been going crazy lately. Something about not being able to find the Lunch Lady. Well, she wasn't in Amity Park, as far as Danny knew. She was probably just avoiding Boxy.

He started to trudge back across the room, but paused halfway. What was that sound? Where was it coming from?

After a bit of investigation, and playing 'hot and cold' with the noise, Danny determined it was coming from the trap door leading down to the Fenton Stockades. Dang. He had half-forgotten they even had those. When was the last time he'd even been down there? The first time Ember attacked? That sounded about right.

Were his parents down there? What would they even be doing? He made a face as he inadvertently remembered a website Dash had forcibly shown him. Gross. No way. He didn't just think that. If he looked- No, he didn't want to know. Nope.

Danny turned, fully intending to run upstairs and pour bleach into his ears to clean his brain of that _disgusting_ image, when he heard a distinctly ghostly vocalization. Ghost words echoed and warped in ways human ones couldn't match.

There was a ghost down there. Well. This was a _great_ start to a horror story. A ghost, in a room full of torture equipment once used by his Dad's crazy witch hunting ancestors. Wonderful. Perfect. It was probably down there making the iron maiden grow teeth and arms, and making the rack float around and grow spikes. As if any of that needed to be more horrifying.

Resigned, Danny opened the trap door and started down the stairs, mentally preparing for a fight. With his luck, the ghost was a witch angry at some ancestor of his. Well, news flash. _He'd_ been tortured by an ancestor, too. He didn't want to deal with this. Why was his family so-?

His thoughts cut off as he tried to process the scene in front of him. He couldn't. Not fully. It was like a conceptual collage, only one thing clear at a time. Green splatters on the floor. The Lunch Lady. The torture chair, leather straps glowing green. He didn't know they did that. His parents, wearing smocks and more protective gear than he had ever seen them in. The specimen jar full of whole fingernails. The larger specimen jar holding a dress, apron, and other folded fabric. The cuts. The dripping ectoplasm. The glistening and medieval tools.

He tried to take a step back, but his heel caught on the stair, and he fell backward with a crash.

His parents turned to him, goggles flashing in the overhead lights. Their protective gear made them seem alien. Insect-like. Reptilian.

(Or was it their actions that did that?)

"Danny, sweetie, what are you doing down here?" asked Maddie. "You know the stockades are off limits! You could get hurt."

She sounded concerned. How could she sound concerned when she was doing- When she was-

"He's just being a Fenton, Mads!" boomed Jack. "Curiosity before caution! That's our motto! Right next to 'Destroy all ghosts!' Probably wanted to see what we were doing. Right, son?"

"R-right," said Danny, unable to disguise the tremor in his voice. "I- I was just curious. Just-" his voice cracked, "wondering where you were! I'm going to- to go back upstairs, now, since, haha, it's- it's dangerous down here. Right?" He scrambled to his feet and fled.

"Be careful in the lab!" Maddie called after him.

Danny slammed the trap door behind him, and ran directly to the sink, retching all his muscles trembling.

The Lunch Lady- She was-

(His worst nightmare, just a few floors beneath his bed.)

How long had this been going on?

How was he going to fix this?


	11. Chapter 11

**Hello, this was from a tumblr prompt by dp-marvel94 via danphanwritingprompts. I wanted to share it with you guys on here as well. :)**

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Deserve

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"Danny!" Jazz held the ectogun in front of her, trying not to flinch at the red-eyed gaze of the person in front of her. "Listen to me. You don't want to do this!"

"Yes, I do," grit out the warped form in front of her. Danny's voice popped and buzzed with supernatural static. "Get out of the way."

"No," said Jazz, holding her ground. She didn't know what this weapon did. She didn't even know if it was functional. It was just the first weapon she had grabbed from the floor when she rushed into the ruined lab.

"They _deserve_ it!" shrieked the ghost of her brother, ectoplasm spattering the floor as the lab's few remaining beakers broke.

Jazz risked a glance behind her, at her unconscious parents. They had been thrown into wall. "What-?"

"They killed her!" Incandescent rage briefly took a back seat to grief and confusion. Danny's form wavered again.

He wasn't talking about Sam. Sam was the one who had called, who had warned Jazz Danny was coming, right before Jazz heard the crash.

"She only just got away," said Danny, eyes briefly flickering green, "and she melted in my arms and she was gone!"

"Ellie," breathed Jazz.

"They _tortured_ her. They _deserve_ to die."

"I'm," Jazz licked her lips and blinked back tears, "I'm not saying they don't, but this isn't about them. It's about _you._ Can you come back from doing this?"

"I don't care!"

"I do!" shouted Jazz. "And you- You _promised_ me! You promised me, no matter what, you wouldn't become like _him_!"

Danny's shape snapped back into solidity. Tan skin, white, fluffy hair, black and white jumpsuit streaked with ectoplasm, stricken green eyes. He was shaking.

Jazz lowered the weapon, and stepped towards him. "Danny-"

He tipped back his head and screamed. Jazz slammed her hands over her ears and squeezed her eyes shut, trying and failing to block out the awful sound.

When she looked up again, Danny was gone.


	12. Chapter 12

**Another tumblr prompt. Very short. Enjoy!**

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Experiment

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"Look at me. You are not an experiment."

The boy on the other side of the arena showed no sign of having heard her. He did not raise his gaze from his bare feet.

Sam tried again. "You aren't a slave. You don't have to do what they tell you. You don't have to do this."

The speakers set into the arena ceiling crackled to life, making her jump. "Experiment D-5541. Begin extermination procedures."

Danny's head snapped up, eyes flaring red.

Sam blinked.

He was directly in front of her, a spike of ectoplasm an inch from her eye.

"Danny?" she said, her eyes flicking between his eyes and the glowing collar around his neck.

"Experiment D-5541, finish the procedure. Exterminate the subject," ordered the voice over the speaker.

Danny didn't so much as breathe. From this distance, Sam could see how thin he was, how pale, how dirty, beneath his ghostly aura. There were bruises and puncture wounds around his wrists.

A long sigh made the speaker crackle. "For the log entry, please note that, once again, experiment D-5541 refuses to carry out extermination procedures on a human being. This is the conclusion of trial 48. Hopefully team two will have better luck with conditioning." The last was added almost as an afterthought. "Sedating subjects."

As before, the arena filled with a white gas that soon had Sam's eyes fluttering closed.

All she could think about was how much closer the spike had been this time.


	13. Chapter 13

**Oh, no, another prompt. :)**

 **This one is from gabbypie64 via danphanwritingprompts.**

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Awake

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It began with a buzzing.

Valerie ignored it. Her suit always buzzed a little, the electronics humming away at a thousand esoteric tasks. She had never examined it too closely. Never look a gift horse in the mouth, as her grandma used to say.

True, the buzzing was a little more insistent than it usually was, a little louder, a little more distracting, but that was probably just because Valerie was tired. She hadn't gotten a good night's sleep in ages, thanks to the ghost kid.

The ghost kid was the reason for her sleeplessness. Not that the buzzing in her ear was mirrored by a buzzing under her skin, a nervous energy that never seemed to go away, especially at night.

She ignored it.

And it went away.

Valerie was able to sleep again. Her grades went back up. When she went to fight Phantom (or whatever that stupid ghost was calling himself now), it was when she was rested, prepared, and had him at a disadvantage. When he just finished fighting another ghost, for instance. When she fought other ghosts, it was on her own terms.

Like it always had been. Of course.

Valerie slept deeply, the sleep of the just.

She began to dream.

They started out normally, like they always had. They were dreams of going to school, or flying, of talking to her mother, of living in her old house. But, always, before she woke, they would warp into something else.

First, she'd find herself in her suit, all slick red armor and danger, hoverboard purring beneath her feat even when she was walking. Then, her perspective would shift, subtly but surely, her motions no longer purposeful, but guided, a long hand on her spine, herself, her being, hollow, only a surface.

She ignored them. They were just dreams.

They didn't go away, but they stopped being memorable.

She couldn't ignore the sleepwalking.

Her father caught her at it as he came home from his shift. She hadn't been doing anything, just slowly pacing back and forth across the living room, eyes closed.

She couldn't ignore it, but she could get treatment. Her sleepwalking episodes stopped.

At least, she thought they had. Apparently, she had been wrong, because she just woke up standing on her hoverboard, far over Amity Park, Phantom floating in front of her, a contemplative look on his face.

She tried to move. She couldn't. It was like her suit had become a cage around her.

"She is awake," said a robotic voice just behind her ear.

"Good," said Phantom. "Hi, Valerie."

"What did you do to me?" she demanded, trying not to let her fear show in her voice.

He rolled his eyes. "Right, because it's always my fault. Not. Your suit has developed a personality, by the way. Tends to happen to things with a lot of ectoplasm in them. We're negotiating. I thought you'd like to be a part of that, but if you'd prefer to sleep…"

Valerie swore.

"Anyway, where were we?" asked Phantom, seemingly unconcerned.

"I need a host to give me structure," stated the robotic voice. Her suit?

"Right. That. But you've been carting her body around at night for weeks. You can't keep doing that without her permission."

"You have done similar things."

"Mitigating circumstances," said Phantom. "The survival of myself and others was on the line."

"My survival is on the line. She will seek to destroy me if I do not intervene, as she has done to you."

"Yeah," said Phantom. "Anyway. So that's about where we are. I do have a couple people who wouldn't mind sharing body space in exchange for cool powers, their words not mine, but we don't know how compatible they'll be, so, I'm turning the decision over to you."

"What?" This was too much for Valerie to cope with five minutes from waking up.

"Do you want to keep the current arrangement with, um, Red, here, or do you want to have your body to yourself and Red can go to someone else? With the addition that Red has to tell you when they're taking you on night walks.

"Th- This- This is a ghost, isn't it?" said Valerie. "You have a ghost overshadowing me! That's why I can't move! Get out of me!"

Phantom sighed, and pulled something cubic from his belt. "Well. I guess that's your answer, then, Red. Remember what we discussed?"

Something that wasn't her nodded her head, then her suit was coming off, leaving her shivering on her hoverboard in her pajamas. Then the hoverboard was gone, and she was falling, and she couldn't call it back, where-?

Phantom caught her. A minute later she was being set down on the roof of her apartment complex.

"What did you do to me?" she demanded, shoving him away.

Phantom's gaze was vaguely disappointed. He didn't answer her as he flew away.

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 **The prompt was 'Valerie's suit becomes self-aware.'**


	14. Chapter 14

**I did another prompt from tumblr! This is from dpmarvel94 again. :)**

 **Thank you for your reviews! Long time no see Ms Frizzle!**

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Gone

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"The monster you're afraid of turning into doesn't exist."

"What do you mean?" demanded Danny, angry and loud, his voice echoing off the far walls of the main hall of Clockwork's lair. "You're the one who showed me!" His breath caught in his throat, and he fought back a sob. "He's _imprisoned_ here!"

Clockwork shook his head, slowly, sadly, and Danny hated how much pity he saw in those ancient eyes. "No, Daniel. He isn't. Let me show you."

Danny didn't want to follow. He wanted to rant and rage and argue. He wanted Clockwork to give him a solution. Any solution.

But he did follow. Because if he followed, Clockwork could be wrong, and then Clockwork would see that Danny was right and he would do something.

Anything.

Clockwork led him through a small door on the side of the hall and down a long, dark spiral staircase. Danny hadn't known Clockwork's lair went down so far, so deep.

"Why do you have stairs?" asked Danny. "You can fly."

"In case I find myself without my present abilities," said Clockwork. "As you have found yourself, in the past. One does well to prepare for the future."

"That's what I'm _trying_ to do," said Danny. He fiddled with his remaining glove. He had used the other one for… It didn't matter now. It would stay gone until he could go human again and reset his ghost form.

Clockwork hummed noncommittally as they reached the bottom of the stair and started off down a narrow stone hallway. There was only one door, a heavy, barred one, all the way at the end of the hall, illuminated by a dim, flickering light.

The hairs on the back of Danny's neck stood on end. If Clockwork had been shooting for ominous, he had certainly managed it.

Clockwork glided forward, smoothly, and Danny hurried to keep up with him, his ghostly tail flicking in frustration. With a gesture, Clockwork raised the bar on the door, and it creaked open, revealing a spotlighted plinth. On the plinth was a Fenton thermos.

Danny swallowed, unwilling to go any closer, as if he might be contaminated by its mere presence.

Clockwork had no such compunctions. He picked up the the thermos, and held it out to Danny.

"Read it, Daniel," he said.

"Read what?" asked Danny, choosing instead to look at Clockwork.

Clockwork lifted the thermos again. "What does it say?" he asked as Danny flinched back.

Biting his lip, drawing blood with his newly-grown fangs, Danny looked down. The thermos was in pristine condition. The screen on the side read 'EMPTY.'

"I- I don't understand," said Danny, shaking.

"The timeline has changed," said Clockwork. "He never existed."

"But-" said Danny. "But he _has_ to, I-" The tears he'd been suppressing began to leak from his eyes. "You'll still bring them back, right? You can still bring them back?"

"I am sorry, Daniel, but I could only save them before because their deaths were a result of a paradox. This was always going to happen."

Danny sank to the floor. "But- But that's not _fair._ I tried so hard and… I can't…"

"I know," said Clockwork, patting Danny's shoulder.

"I can't do this without them," said Danny, feeling small.

"You can," said Clockwork, setting the thermos down by Danny's knee, the metal clinking against the stone floor. "You will."

"I don't know what to do," said Danny, scrubbing tears off his face. "Everyone is gone. The- The- Even the _house_ is gone. There's just a hole in the ground and the portal. I don't have anything, anymore."

Clockwork bent his arm around Danny's shoulders. "You have time."


	15. Chapter 15

**another another another another**

 **I think this is the third I'm posting today? I may have a problem.**

 **It is raining outside.**

 **This prompt was by browa123**

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Enlightenment

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Parchment crinkled under the fingers of Maddie's gloves, the sound echoing weirdly off the vaulted ceiling of the ruin she had discovered floating only thirty minutes from the Fenton Portal. She wore a Fenton Ecto-Exploration suit, designed to protect a human being from all the dangers of the Ghost Zone, a tether and hose tying her back to the Specter Speeder.

Already, this first foray into the Ghost Zone had yielded more data than she and Jack had gotten in all the time before opening the portal, and more data than they recorded in a week back in Amity Park, waiting for the ghosts to show up on their own terms. Minutes after entering, they had encountered whole swarms of lesser ghosts, little creatures that barely showed up on their scanners, and to their surprise, a vast variety of ghostly architecture.

True, most of the buildings were ruins, and there were far too many stairs and free-floating doors to be at all logical for entities that could fly, but their presence had been entirely unexpected and brought up whole new lines of inquiry.

Who built these structures? Why? How? Had humans once lived here? Because ghosts didn't have the focus, the organization, or the intelligence to do something like this. Perhaps they were stolen. She and Jack had researched occurrences of people and vehicles being spirited away, most notably in places like Bermuda. But for all these buildings to suffer a similar state…

Maddie had to investigate. That meant leaving the relatively safe confines of the Speeder. Jack had objected, of course, not to the concept of entering one of the buildings, but to Maddie being the one to go. But she had talked him over to her point of view. She was the better fighter, after all, and less likely to set off any traps the ghosts had left in the buildings.

She had lucked out, too, in their choice of buildings. This appeared to be an abandoned library, or some kind of record repository, full of scrolls and bound books.

There were too many for her to take all of them, sadly. The ecto-preservation box she had brought for samples would only fit a few of the thick, dusty tomes- and she had to put them in the box. There was no telling how quickly they would decay if exposed to normal, real-world air.

She picked the five books that looked best preserved, with leathery covers and silver-edged pages. The scrolls appeared to be more fragile, even if she could probably fit more of them in the box.

Giving the room one last glance and snapping one last picture with her Fenton Ecto-Imager, she turned, and followed her tether back to the Speeder.

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They kept the books in a sealed glass containment unit, using attached gloves to reach in and manipulate the pages, as if they were handling lethal chemicals or disease-carrying vials. For all they knew, the books could be just as dangerous. Even something as innocuous as a musical instrument could become a weapon in a ghost's hands.

Still, the main reason for their precautions was to preserve the books. The pages were fragile enough, and scans showed that the paper and parchment they were made of had a high ectoplasm content; a high enough content that, were the ectoplasm in them to disperse, the pages might crumble entirely.

Maddie and Jack painstakingly took pictures of every page. They were written, and beautifully illuminated, in a language neither of them were familiar with, forcing them to send the work of translating them to a linguist friend.

Jack literally held his breath, waiting for the linguist to call them back. Maddie was less optimistic about the response time. Jocelyn was a friend, yes, had been a friend since college, but Maddie was well aware of the reputation she and Jack had built up over the years. They would be lucky if Jocelyn looked over the images this month, let alone within five minutes of-

The phone rang.

Maddie hit the speaker button. "Hello, this is Fentonworks, Dr. Fenton speaking."

"Maddie, this is Jocelyn. Where did you get these books?"

"The Ghost Zone!" said Jack, excitedly.

Jocelyn laughed. "Right, right, don't tell me, that's fine. Anyway, four of them look like they're in Voynich script-"

"So you can translate them?" asked Maddie, excitedly.

"Afraid not! Before you showed me these, I thought there was only one example of that in the world, and no one has been able to translate it. You should get these all tested for authenticity, by the way. If any of them are legit, you have a fortune on your hands. Anyway. The fifth one seems to be mostly in Gaelic script, with some notes in Latin and Ogham. Very interesting. Subject matter seems to be ghosts from what I can tell, which, well, I'm not surprised, exactly."

"So you can translate that one?" Maddie asked, eagerly. She didn't want the trip to come to nothing.

"Well, some of it. I'm not super familiar with Irish languages. I'll have to ask my colleagues, and they'll really want some kind of confirmation about the books before they spend too much time on it. You know?"

"That's reasonable," said Maddie, even as she winced. She'd have to follow up with Jocelyn on what kind of 'confirmation' translators would want.

"Anyway, from what I can tell just by looking, this is a treatise of some kind on the 'half-dead,' compiled by a couple different authors over a long period of time. The Latin notes read like clarifications, or personal anecdotes, but there are also a lot of references to the god Janus. There's a bit much to go over on the phone."

"You can email us," said Maddie.

"How about I drive down to Amity? I'll bring my notes, and I really want to hear where you got these."

"We told you! The Ghost Zone!"

"You always were a joker, Jack. Good to see life hasn't changed you. So, do you guys mind if I come?"

"Not at all," said Maddie.

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Jocelyn regarded the portal with guarded disbelief. "I can't believe it. I really can't. No one is going to believe this." She paused. "Were those books written by ghosts?"

"Unlikely," said Maddie. "Ghosts lack the mental capacity. It's more likely that these were stolen from people who were researching ghosts."

"Right, right, that makes sense, I suppose. Anyway, I think I've put together a good summary of what's in that book. I had to call in some favors, by the way, so you owe me. Also, you'll have to pay to get the whole thing done, sorry." She put her bags on a clean counter top, and gazed longingly at the books under the glass. "Man, I hope you can get more of those. Wouldn't it be wild to translate the Voyinch manuscript?"

"Well, lets work on the one we have now," said Maddie.

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By the time Jocelyn left, Maddie was obsessed.

The book was about _half-ghosts,_ a species of ghost that _had_ to be either entirely mythical or, at least, extinct in the modern day. Humans simply couldn't have ghost powers. The science didn't work.

But the stories were fascinating. The descriptions of how 'half-ghosts' developed and acted were detailed. The logic of the ancient authors compelling.

As far as the translated portions went, in any case.

It left Maddie wondering: What if half-ghosts _were_ possible?

How would one be made?

She and Jack spent hours pouring over the notes Jocelyn had left, staying up all night. Her visit hadn't been nearly long enough to go over everything.

Maddie felt a little guilty. She knew her children, Jazz and Danny, worried over them when they got so invested in a project like this, especially a project so likely to come to nothing. Danny, in particular, had come down several times to bring them snacks or peek over their shoulders.

Maddie and Jack, feeling guilty, and also tired, had relented towards dinnertime, and ordered pizza for the family. Then, they had gathered on the couch to watch a movie. Jack fell asleep right away, but Maddie was too wired.

"So," said Danny, his eyes fixed blankly on a dialogue-free action sequence. "What _are_ you guys working on, down there? You've been busy since yesterday."

"Well," said Maddie, "you remember that we took our first trip into the Ghost Zone a few days ago?"

"Yeah," said Danny.

"We found those books there, and Jocelyn translated some parts of one of them for us. We think they're field observations made by medieval ghost hunters."

Skepticism and exasperation flitted across Danny's features, but quickly vanished. Maddie pushed away her disappointment. Danny and Jazz had never been very enthusiastic about their work, and she despaired of what would happen to Fentonworks when she and Jack got too old to keep it up.

Still. He was showing interest now, even if it was only to be polite.

"Okay," said Danny. "What are you guys going to do with them?" He rubbed his hands back and forth on the couch upholstery.

"We were planning on running a few tests to see if the claims made in them are feasible."

Danny winced.

"Don't worry, we'll make sure everything we do is perfectly safe," said Maddie, patting his knee.

"You're going to be playing Mythbusters with ghosts," said Danny, dryly. "I really doubt that's going to be _safe."_

The characters in the movie started talking again.

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Danny had a point, Maddie had to admit. On the other hand, it wasn't as if she were testing these things on herself, and Jack was around to double-check all her calculations.

"… manuscript retrieved from the Ghost Zone," said Maddie, clearly, into her recorder, "suggests that natural portals formed an important role in the formation of the first generation of so-called 'half-ghosts' or 'doorway spirits.' The exact role is unclear at this point in our translation efforts, however, based on our own interaction with the Fenton Portal, and the fact that we do not exhibit the abilities of 'half-ghosts,' we believe the most likely cause is being 'caught' in a forming portal. If, of course, there's any validity to the manuscript's claims in the first place."

Maddie paused, adjusting some of the controls in front of her, making sure everything was in place. Jack was taking care of the mice.

"We are going to test this theory with mice. Based on our current understanding of portal physics, our current expectation is that the mice will simply die. However, we ignore the wisdom of the past at our own risk. Are you ready, Jack?"

"Just about!" said Jack, fitting the last mouse into a harness to keep it from escaping the opening portal. He jogged over to stand with Maddie behind the blast shield.

Maddie nodded, checked the cameras, and then pulled the lever to bring the portal gun into alignment. They both pulled on their tinted goggles.

"Will you do the honors, dear?" she asked Jack, nodding at the firing button.

"You betcha! Geronimo!"

The lab was filled with a flash of light, making both of them wince, and then everything went dark.

"I think we tripped a circuit breaker, Mads," said Jack, sheepishly.

"It happens," said Maddie. "I hope the kids weren't in the shower…" She tapped the night-vision switch on her goggles and walked over to the breaker box. She flipped the culprit switch. "There we go. Now, let's take a look at the mi-" She blinked at the wreck of the mice cages. "They're gone!"

They would have to revise their theories. None of them had predicted the mice being _vaporized._

 _._

"I think I know why our experiment with the mice didn't work," said Jack.

"Oh?" said Maddie. She was working on preparing the Speeder for another expedition.

"No Obsession. To get a halfa, we need something that would have become a ghost on death anyway."

Maddie frowned. "Halfa?"

"Easier than saying 'half-ghost,'" explained Jack.

"You may have a point," said Maddie. "But that just means we'll never be able to create a halfa in the lab. We can't predict what will make a ghost."

"That's true," said Jack. " _But,_ we agreed before, halfas would be able to blend in with the living pretty well, right? Their human brains would override most of their ghostly impulses?"

"Except for a slight tendency towards violent and possessive behavior, yes," said Maddie. "What are you getting at?"

"Well, natural portals still form all the time! And there are more humans than there have ever been. Halfas could be all around us and we'd never even know it! What we need is a way to _detect_ them."

"You're right," said Maddie. "But how?"

"Well, in theory they'd have ectosignatures, like ghosts, right? So, we could use our regular scanners, and if a human showed up as a ghost on them, then they'd be a halfa!"

"But, Jack, our scanners never work properly. They keep latching on to Danny, remember? Ever since…" Maddie's brow furrowed. "Ever since… his accident with the portal."

Jack had gone an odd, pasty color. "You don't think-?"

"No," said Maddie, firmly. "It isn't possible."

"But if it _was?"_

Maddie looked up, as if she could see through metal, concrete, wood, laminate, carpet, and drywall, all the way to Danny's room on the second floor. "If it was… We'd just have to ask him, wouldn't we?"


	16. Chapter 16

**Okay, so I did another fic for the 'monster' prompt.**

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Flare

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"The monster you're afraid of turning into doesn't exist."

Maddie's gloves (white, not black, why couldn't they be black) twitched around the grip and stock of the ectogun she was assembling. It would be powerful. Powerful enough to vaporize a newly-formed ghost.

"Danny," she said, turning to face her son (if she could still call him that), "you shouldn't be down here."

"Neither should you," said Danny.

"I know. That's what I'm trying to fix."

Danny flinched. "That's not what I meant."

"I know, sweetie, but it's already remarkable that I retained so much of myself. It's only a matter of time before I-" She broke off, shaking her head. "The last thing I can do for you is make sure I don't become a problem you three have to take care of."

"Then go to the Ghost Zone!" said Danny. "Wait and see. Don't do _this._ This is crazy!"

Maddie sighed (the motion was as strange as it was familiar, now that she didn't need to breathe). "Danny-"

"You won't become a monster, or go crazy, or anything that you and Dad talk about! I _know_ you won't."

"You can't know that."

"I can!"

"How?" snapped Maddie, forcing down her temper (her temper that was so much more volatile than in life).

"Because I've been dead for two years!"

If Maddie's heart hadn't been still for the last week, it would have stopped when she saw her son's eyes flare green.


	17. Chapter 17

**This prompt was from ectolights!**

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Tongue

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"Watch your tongue, little King, or it might get cut off."

"Better than having it grow forked," shot back Danny as he tried to squirm away from the snakelike ghost.

The ghost hissed. "Are you sure that won't happen anyway?" it asked. "You lie so much. How can you even tell what is true?" The ghost's forked tongue flicked from between its lips, lisping against Danny's cheek.

Danny flinched back, banging his head against the back of the tall wooden chair he was currently bound to. The ghost's coils shifted across Danny's lap and around his waist, their grip on his ankles tightened.

"At least my breath smells better than yours."

The ghost laughed breathlessly. "Little king," it cooed. "Do you think your iron crown will protect you?"

"I'm not a king," said Danny, struggling, "and I don't have a crown."

He didn't know what this ghost's problem was. A couple of hours ago, it had seemed like any other chimeric, human-animal mashup ghost that came to Amity Park: a cocktail of violence, misplaced anger, and superpowers. Like he would with any other ghost attacking Amity Park, Danny had come out to fight it. The fight had even been normal.

Right up until the ghost had bitten him and he found himself losing consciousness mid-punch.

He woke up here, chained to this chair, under an apple tree. The place wasn't familiar to him. He wasn't even sure if he was in the Ghost Zone or not.

Worse, he couldn't access his powers.

So, he did what any teenage superhero of questionable mortality and self-preservation skills would do: He mouthed off.

"No crown? We'll have to change that, now, won't we?" The ghost trailed a clawed hand over Danny's face, then slithered away into the surrounding foliage.

Danny heaved a sigh of relief and bent to examine the chains around his wrists and lower arms. Where and how did they connect, and how could he get out of them?

They must connect behind or under the chair, he decided, or at least out of sight. They were also very snug, so, sadly, he couldn't see a way to pull out of them.

Well, this was bad.

He looked around, trying to see if there was anything nearby that could help him. All he could see, though, were the branches of the large tree behind him, the clear area around it, and the circle of shrubby greenery around that.

Yep. Still bad.

Maybe he could break the chair if he pulled hard enough? It seemed pretty sturdy, but, well, he didn't have anything else he could try. He might as well give it a go.

All to soon, the snakelike ghost was back, a crude black crown clutched in one of its humanlike hands, a complicated array of straps and metal bits tossed over its scaly shoulder.

Danny did not like the look of either.

"Your crown, your small majesty," said the ghost, holding the piece of metal up so that he could see it.

The top came to a set of jagged, unevenly sized and spaced. On the outer sides, oddly enough, rough rings had been welded on. The work as a whole was lumpy and unattractive.

"I think it suits you," said the ghost. It was disturbing how sincere it sounded. "With this people will come from all corners to bow at your feet."

"I think you need your eyes checked," said Danny. "Or your head. Either one."

The ghost smiled, and the expression looked sick on its face. Almost delicately, it placed the crown on Danny's head. Then, lighting fast, it shoved the other thing, the thing made mostly of straps, into Danny's mouth.

Danny tried to bite down on the ghost's hand, but part of the thing was wedged in between his back teeth, and he couldn't. Then the ghost had its hands out, and was hooking the straps to the rings on the crown. At least, Danny assumed that's what it was doing. He couldn't see something on top of his head.

As the ghost fiddled with the apparatus, attaching straps to the crown, each other, and even the chair, Danny's jaw was forced open wider and wider until it was stretched to just shy of painful.

The ghost leaned back, admiring its handiwork, as Danny glared up at it, breathing heavily.

"I did tell you," it said. "Be careful, little king, or you'll lose your tongue." It reached into Danny's mouth and ran a claw across the back of Danny's tongue. Danny flinched and gagged, but his range of motion was even more limited than before and he couldn't get away. "Be glad I didn't cut it off entirely. I could still do that, you know."

The snake ghost stayed there for another few minutes, just staring down at Danny. Drool started to creep over Danny's lower lip and drip down his chin.

"I really do like you better this way. I think everyone else will, too." It tilted its head and smiled, fangs jutting out over its lower lips. "One last gift, before I go."

Without any further warning, the ghost lunged forward and bit Danny.

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It must have been hours later when Danny woke up, because his mouth was sore and tasted absolutely foul, but the light was the same, and he wasn't hungry or thirsty, or in need of a bathroom.

In conclusion, this must be somewhere in the Ghost Zone. Wonderful.

He shifted, looking around the little clearing. It looked like he was alone, but his field of view wasn't great. He tried accessing his ghost powers again. Nothing.

His shirt was also soaked with drool, which was… not great.

His jaw spasmed against the gag, and he moaned at the resulting pain.

Something rustled in the bushes. Danny went tense. There was little he could do against an enemy right now, but at least he could brace himself.

About a dozen small, troll-like ghosts emerged from the shrubbery, carrying baskets. They caught sight of him, froze for a moment, and started muttering among themselves in a ghost language Danny didn't know. They turned back to him, eyes wide and worshipful.

As one, they knelt.

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As was pathetically typical, Danny had no idea what was going on.

Alright, that wasn't entirely true. The little troll ghosts, and there were many more than the dozen or so he had first seen, had apparently decided to worship him. They left various offerings around his feet and decorated him with jewelry and flowers. Why? He didn't know.

Sadly, their idea of worship did not appear to include freeing him from his chains. Oh, no. Instead, they added _more_ chains. More decorative ones than the originals, sure, but still chains.

This sucked. On so many levels.

The trolls' current activity involved a lot of dancing, singing, and genuflecting. Danny really could have done without any of it.

Then, miracle of miracles, the Specter Speeder crashed into the clearing. Jazz jumped out, wearing the Peeler, and the trolls scattered. Performing at least two unnecessary but admittedly cool rolls, Jazz made her way to Danny, and started cutting at the chains with a Fenton Definitely-Not-A-Lightsaber.

Sam stood by the Speeder doors, a truly enormous gun in her hand. Tucker was visible at the wheel.

The main chains gone, Danny pried himself up from the chair and stumbled towards the Speeder, Jazz's hand on his back. As soon as they were aboard, Tucker took off.

With Jazz's help he was able to get the gag and crown off.

"How did you find me?" he croaked. "I didn't see the boo-merang."

"Followed a rumor that a snake guy sold a king to the troll tribes on the black market," said Sam. "Apparently they worship kings, or something, but prefer them to be captive. I didn't really get it. Ghosts are weird."

"Oh," said Danny, taking a bottle of water from Jazz. "Guess they got scammed, then. I'm not a king."

Sam gave him an odd look. "I'm not sure they did."


	18. Chapter 18

**This is sort of a proof of concept. I'm thinking of doing a more involved fic with the same general idea.**

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Dark

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Danny pushed down on the lid of the Sarcophagus of Forever Sleep, one eye on the Ecto-Skeleton's power level counter as it ticked ever closer to zero. Every time Pariah Dark pounded on the inside of the lid, he felt it vibrate up his arms. He was growing weaker. He couldn't hold on for much longer.

Where the heck was Vlad with the key?

The lid bounced up under the force of a particularly strong blow, and Danny pushed it back down, panting. It took him more effort than before. Something wet ran down his back and his face. Not sweat- He didn't sweat, not as a ghost, and Danny tried not to think about stories his parents had told him about ghosts destabilizing and melting.

The counter was at 1%. The only thing that gave him the strength to keep pushing the lid down was sheer desperation.

He choked out a sob as one of his arms buckled. Where was Vlad? He was supposed to come with the key! Danny should have already won. He'd gotten Pariah Dark into the Sarcophagus. He was holding it closed. Those were supposed to be his victory conditions.

His vision blurred through tears.

(He didn't want to die again.)

The counter ticked to 0.

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Pariah's next slam against the Sarcophagus lid met no resistance. It slammed back with a crash that resounded around the throne room that had been, for so many years, his crypt. With a roar, he emerged. Never again would he be imprisoned in such a way!

He saw his crown lying on the floor, kicked to a corner in the fight, and, with a gesture, summoned it to himself and placed it on his head once again. Power strummed through his skin, making him whole once more.

But what had happened to the young warrior who had challenged him?

Ah, there he was, collapsed next to the Sarcophagus, trembling within the metal prison his magic armor had become. His aura flickered like a guttering candle.

Pariah had destroyed enough ghosts in his afterlife to know the boy was fading. What a waste. The boy was strong and clever. In Pariah's court he would have gone far.

Perhaps he still would. Pariah knew a trick or two.

He reached through the metal armor and pulled free the limp child. His flesh was soft beneath Pariah's hands, malleable.

With a gentleness that would have surprised his many enemies, Pariah Dark turned the child over, shaping him, molding him. The child instinctively and unconsciously accepted the bargain Pariah offered. Stability and continued existence in return for compliance with Pariah's wishes. It was an exchange child ghosts were predisposed to make.

When Pariah was done, a much smaller, more delicate ghost rested in the palm of his hand. He smiled as the little ghost curled in on itself and yawned, displaying small fangs. The boy put one hand in his mouth and the other on one of his newly grown horns, face scrunching in sleep.

Pariah had always wanted a son.


	19. Chapter 19

**So, I continued this from Enlightenment, aka ch 15**.

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Enlightenment 2

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Danny lay on his bed, staring at the ceiling. He knew it was only a matter of time. His parents were, well, _eccentric,_ but they weren't stupid. They'd put two and two together before too long.

Maybe he should do something rather that just… lying here. Waiting. Passive.

Like his homework. He always complained about not having enough time to do his homework, yet here he was, wasting time contemplating the secrets of the ceiling.

Resolved to be productive, Danny sat up and reached for his homework.

He was, of course, interrupted by a knock on his door.

"Danny? Sweetheart? Can we come in?"

He let his hand fall back into his lap. Typical.

"Sure," said Danny.

The door creaked open, and his parents filed in, both uncharacteristically grim.

Oh. Yep. It was time. They had found out.

Danny took a shaky breath. "So," he said, smiling. Because a smile meant he was at ease, right? "What's up?"

"We were wondering," said Maddie, "if we could talk to you about your accident with the portal."

Danny forced down what would have been a nervous and suspicious laugh. "It's been a while, hasn't it? Is it about those experiments you've been running recently? The ones with the books from the Ghost Zone?" The books that Danny understood far better than his parents, because he could read the languages they were written in. All of them.

Because, with the exception of the one written in Irish and Latin, they were written by half-ghosts.

He'd been so excited, when he first saw them. He'd tried to sneak down to lab whenever his parents hadn't been there to flip through the books. Knowing that Vlad _wasn't_ the first half-ghost was a massive weight off his chest. He didn't have to worry that he would slowly be corrupted and turn evil, like Vlad did.

But then he'd realized what Jack and Maddie's near-obsessive research on the subject of half-ghosts meant for him, and that weight had piled right back on.

"Yes," said Maddie. "It is. We were wondering, did you ever experience any…" she paused, clearly unsure how to phrase her question, "side effects?"

Danny chewed on his lip. "What happens," he said, "if I say yes?"

"We'll try to figure out why," said Jack.

"What if I know why?" asked Danny. "What if… I'm okay with it, and I don't want you to try to fix me?"

"What do you mean?" asked Maddie, her voice trembling.

"I mean… I mean I know that half-ghosts are possible. I mean, I…" he faltered.

"You mean, you are one," said Maddie.

"Yeah," said Danny, watching both his parents warily, ready to flick invisible and phase through the floor at a moment's notice.

"So," said Maddie, "so, what is it like? What- What happened to you, Danny?"

"It's," said Danny, swallowing, "not bad. I feel mostly the same," he decided to hold off on explaining his more ghostly impulses, "I just have, you know, some ghost powers."

Said ghost powers decided to kick in at that moment, picking up on his nerves. His outline wavered before Danny got hold of himself again.

Maddie nodded, once, tightly. "Your grades?"

Danny made a face. "You're not thinking that this damaged my brain or anything, are you?" He decided to wait to mention his core, his ghostly brain, floating in his chest, and that he was pretty sure he was smarter than he had been before. "The only reason my grades are down is because the ghosts like to come fight me, and I can't do that in class."

"Of course not," said Maddie, faintly. "Do you- The book, it said halfas-"

"That's a bit of a slur, honestly," said Danny.

"Half-ghosts, then, that they often have a… alternate form."

"Yeah," said Danny, answering the unspoken question. "I do. But I don't- I don't think we're… ready for that, yet."

"Danny-"

"You still think all ghosts are evil."

"You just said they attack you during school."

"Not most of them! You don't ever even see most of them," said Danny. He pulled his legs up onto his bed and hugged his knees.

"You're right," said Maddie.

"What?" said Jack.

"You're right, Danny," she said, more firmly. "That you're… that this happened to you, it shows that some of our theories need to be adjusted, and…" she trailed off, then took a step closer to Danny. She put a hand on his shoulder, and he didn't flinch. "We want you to know, we love you, no matter what. Whether you're completely human, or half-ghost, or if you look… _unusual_ when you're a ghost or… anything. We love you."

"That's right, Danno," said Jack, softly. "You'll always be our son, even if you're huge and green and have _teeth-"_

 _"Aaaand_ that's enough, Jack," said Maddie. "If you- If you want to talk about this, Danny, we'll be downstairs, okay? Whenever you want."

"Okay," said Danny.

It took a long time to work up the courage to go down.


	20. Chapter 20

I did this because Lexx dared me, blame her. This is a sequel to chapter 12: Experiment.

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Experiment 2

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In the few, stolen moments when Danny could be himself, when he could remember what it was like to think, he was not afraid of hurting Sam. He could never hurt Sam. Or Tucker. Or Jazz. Or anybody, really.

At least, he couldn't kill them.

The incident with Freakshow had proved that. What Frostbite had taught him had confirmed it. Danny could never kill a person.

Even the thought of doing so made him sick. It was antithetical to his Obsession, the spiritual core that let him exist. It was physically impossible.

What Danny feared was the GIW would finding out.

The GIW knew a lot about ghosts, but they didn't really understand them. That lack had saved Danny so far, insofar as he could be said to be saved.

But if they found out- If they knew they were chasing a dead end-

What Danny feared was them finding out and disposing of their human test subject. What Danny feared was them finding out and deciding to use him for something he couldn't fight. What Danny feared was them finding out and somehow binding his Obsession to _them._ What Danny feared was them finding out and deciding that he was better used as an unliving anatomy lesson.

But, most of the time, he didn't fear anything.

He didn't _feel_ anything. Except for obedience.

The wall in front of him was as blank as his mind. An experimenter in equally white clothes paced back and forth in front of it, periodically obscuring Danny's view. Danny did not turn his head to follow the experimenter's progress. His eyes did not rotate. He had been told to be still, and so he was.

"Alright, so," said the experimenter to someone Danny couldn't see, "the thing is, D-5541," the collar around Danny's neck purred to life, stroking at his dormant core, awaiting orders, "will follow any order _unless_ the order involves inflicting significant damage on a human or sufficiently intelligent ghost, correct?"

"That's right," drawled a voice from behind Danny.

Without an order, the collar returned to its base state, conserving power.

"But it _has_ inflicted that damage in the past, inadvertently."

This was almost, but not quite, enough for Danny's consciousness to claw its way back up to the surface.

"So, what I'm saying is, what if this is a perception issue? What if we block out its sensory input and just give it orders?"

"That would make control a lot harder," said the other voice. "Make it harder for it to operate. Damage a lot of its value as an asset."

"Yeah, yeah. But if we can overcome the hurdle, we can just cut out its sensory input when we need it to go in for the kill, or whatever you want to call it for ghosts, and let it operate normally otherwise."

"That could work," agreed the other voice.

"Great," said the first experimenter, stopping at the very edge of Danny's field of view. He clapped his hands together. "Let's get started."

Danny was afraid of hurting Sam.


End file.
